Preferences: Results

This dialog box appears when you choose the Tools > Preferences command from the main menu, then go to the Results tab. It allows you to edit a number of settings that affect the presentation and treatment of query results in Publish or Perish.

Result options

This box contains options that affect the way Publish or Perish calculates and displays its results.

Option

Description

Show 'h' markers for results that contribute to the h-index

Check this box to let Publish or Perish display a small 'h' icon in front of all result items that contribute to the h-index; clear it to omit the icon. The 'h' icon makes it easier to identify which result items are part of the h-index and which items are not, and must therefore gain additional citations to increase the h-index.

Maximum significant authors/paper

Enter the maximum number of authors per paper that Publish or Perish will use to calculate metrics. This affects only metrics that take the number of authors per paper into account (for example, the individual h-index) and is meant to cap the effects of excessively large numbers of authors per paper (i.e., more than a few dozen). The default and maximum values for this option are 50.

Note: After changing this value, you must manually trigger a recalculation of the affected metrics by selecting each query that you want to recalculate.

Minimum cites/yearfor * publications

Enter the minimum number of citations per year that a result must have to be marked as a "star" publication. This is mostly a cosmetic option that allows you to identify high-performing publications in a list of results.

Defaults resultssorting order

Set the desired sorting order for newly displayed query results. The following options are available:

By relevance (rank) - sorts the results by their Rank column in ascending order, i.e., most relevant first. The ranking of the results is determined by the data source, so this option sorts results in the order they were returned from the data source.

By citation count - sorts results by the Cites column in descending order, i.e., most cited first. This option places the the most cited results first, which is useful if you are primarily interested in citation metrics or in finding the most cited articles in a particular area.

Last used order - sort the results by whatever column was most recently used for sorting. This setting is persistent, so the sort order will be retained from query to query and also when you exit and then restart Publish or Perish.

Result aging

This box contains options that determine how Publish or Perish ages the results of previously executed queries in the folder tree, as follows.

Queries in the My queries folder older than a preset number of days are automatically migrated to the Saved queries folder.

Queries in the Saved queries folder older than a second preset number of days are automatically migrated to the Trash folder.

Finally, queries in the Trash folder older than a third preset number of days are automatically deleted.

The aging of queries only applies to queries that reside in the My queries, Saved queries, or Trash folders. Queries that reside in other folders are not affected by the aging policies.

Option

Description

Move to Saved Queriesif older than <n> days

Enter the maximum age for My queries queries. When a query is older than this number of days, it is moved automatically to the Saved queries folder.

Move to Trashif older than <n> days

Enter the maximum age for Saved queries queries. When a query is older than this number of days, it is moved automatically to the Trash folder.

Delete Trash queriesif older than <n> days

Enter the number of days after which queries should be deleted from the Trash folder.

Tip: to avoid automatic deletion of queries, set this to a high number of days, for example 9999.

Web master of Harzing.com and developer of the Publish or Perish software, among other things. He holds BSc and MSc degrees in Electrical Engineering, a PhD in Operations Research, and likes to watch academic life from a safe distance.